But why am I here you might ask. Well, that's simple. I need to document something. A project of sorts. Something I've thought up and decided I needed to do. Or try to do anyway.
Food: I love it. It's a passion for me. To cook it. To eat it. To share it with good friends. I recently was struck off guard by how much a movie I saw called "Julie & Julia" spoke to me. And somehow it planted a seed in me. And here I am.
So this morning I sent out the following message to 77 of my friends:
January 13 at 9:54am
Good morning. The reason I’m writing you this morning is to share with you a bit of a project I’m working on. As many of you are aware, I have in recent years taken a rather unnatural interest in cooking. Many of you have tasted something I made or even just read about the endless things that come out of my kitchen and suggested I should start a café or bakery or something. I’m sorry but I just can’t do that—take something I love like cooking and turn it into just another job. Not right now. The bottom line is that I just really love food, and I love sharing it with my friends.
I recently saw an amazing film called Julie & Julia. It is a story about a girl who makes a personal project out of cooking through every recipe in Julia Child’s classic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year and writing a blog about it. I loved the idea that you could take a rather impossible sounding task and make a really fun adventure out of it. But it wouldn’t be very rewarding to simply copy this (arguably noble) feat of culinary artistry. I need a challenge of my own. Something that suits me and is my own thing.
And let’s be honest folks: I just don’t think I could live a year on French food (no offense to Julia or French cuisine). At any rate, with me eating only seafood and not meat, I wouldn’t be able to complete such a task, so why try? So I needed to adapt this and come up with something better. The year has already started. The clock is ticking. What to do?
Here’s the challenge that I’ve chosen to take. There are 50 weeks left in the year. I intend to have 50—yes, 50!—dinner parties for my friends before the year is up. They might not happen every week and some weeks might have more than one, but 50 must be completed before December 31st. All of the food will come from another amazing person in the history of American food: Craig Claiborne. And the recipes shall all come from his 1961 classic which has become a staple in homes across America for generations: The New York Times Cookbook. 800 pages and over 2000 recipes. No way to get through all of them, nor do I wish to. But 50 dinners shall allow us to know hundreds of dishes throughout the course of the year.
Some dinners might be small intimate affairs and others large banquets. They might be served on paper plates on the sofa with others being formal black tie haute affairs. It’s quite possible a number of them will center around themes: a particular type of food, a color, a movie, a particular era in history, etc. Sometimes costumes might be involved. Booze/wine will always be involved. Some rare dinners might even have performances, or multimedia features.
You received this email because you are part of the group of people I have come to call my dear friends. That means over the course of the next year, you will most likely receive a number of invitations to my house for dinner. And therefore you all will be part of this project. Attendance will never be required, but you might be requested to RSVP in some cases. My place ain’t that big, especially for sit down meals at a table, so I doubt if each one will have more than 4-5 people max. But I shall make the rounds and make sure that everyone has a chance to participate. I have wonderful friends, and in this way I can make sure I see all of them and spend a lot of time with them in what will hopefully be an incredible marathon of dinner parties.
I’m going to keep a record of the project, which I’ve entitled “A Feast Made for Laughter”, taking the name from the autobiography of the cookbook’s author, Craig Claiborne. By the way if you don’t know about him, by the end of the year, you shall. He’s a southern queen from Mississippi who was brought up in the Great Depression and after traveling the world in the Navy ended up becoming one of the most powerful people in the world of food as Food Editor of the New York Times from 1957-1988. His friends were among the most influential people in the 20th century.
At the end of the year, hopefully with a heart full of great memories and a belly full of even greater food, I want us all to be able to look back and say that for 2010 we enjoyed life. So here we go my dear friends. I haven’t worked out any of the details, but wanted to give you a head’s up to know what’s in store. And who knows, once all this is said and done maybe I’ll write a book about it and get on Oprah. :) Bon Appétit!
I recently saw an amazing film called Julie & Julia. It is a story about a girl who makes a personal project out of cooking through every recipe in Julia Child’s classic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year and writing a blog about it. I loved the idea that you could take a rather impossible sounding task and make a really fun adventure out of it. But it wouldn’t be very rewarding to simply copy this (arguably noble) feat of culinary artistry. I need a challenge of my own. Something that suits me and is my own thing.
And let’s be honest folks: I just don’t think I could live a year on French food (no offense to Julia or French cuisine). At any rate, with me eating only seafood and not meat, I wouldn’t be able to complete such a task, so why try? So I needed to adapt this and come up with something better. The year has already started. The clock is ticking. What to do?
Here’s the challenge that I’ve chosen to take. There are 50 weeks left in the year. I intend to have 50—yes, 50!—dinner parties for my friends before the year is up. They might not happen every week and some weeks might have more than one, but 50 must be completed before December 31st. All of the food will come from another amazing person in the history of American food: Craig Claiborne. And the recipes shall all come from his 1961 classic which has become a staple in homes across America for generations: The New York Times Cookbook. 800 pages and over 2000 recipes. No way to get through all of them, nor do I wish to. But 50 dinners shall allow us to know hundreds of dishes throughout the course of the year.
Some dinners might be small intimate affairs and others large banquets. They might be served on paper plates on the sofa with others being formal black tie haute affairs. It’s quite possible a number of them will center around themes: a particular type of food, a color, a movie, a particular era in history, etc. Sometimes costumes might be involved. Booze/wine will always be involved. Some rare dinners might even have performances, or multimedia features.
You received this email because you are part of the group of people I have come to call my dear friends. That means over the course of the next year, you will most likely receive a number of invitations to my house for dinner. And therefore you all will be part of this project. Attendance will never be required, but you might be requested to RSVP in some cases. My place ain’t that big, especially for sit down meals at a table, so I doubt if each one will have more than 4-5 people max. But I shall make the rounds and make sure that everyone has a chance to participate. I have wonderful friends, and in this way I can make sure I see all of them and spend a lot of time with them in what will hopefully be an incredible marathon of dinner parties.
I’m going to keep a record of the project, which I’ve entitled “A Feast Made for Laughter”, taking the name from the autobiography of the cookbook’s author, Craig Claiborne. By the way if you don’t know about him, by the end of the year, you shall. He’s a southern queen from Mississippi who was brought up in the Great Depression and after traveling the world in the Navy ended up becoming one of the most powerful people in the world of food as Food Editor of the New York Times from 1957-1988. His friends were among the most influential people in the 20th century.
At the end of the year, hopefully with a heart full of great memories and a belly full of even greater food, I want us all to be able to look back and say that for 2010 we enjoyed life. So here we go my dear friends. I haven’t worked out any of the details, but wanted to give you a head’s up to know what’s in store. And who knows, once all this is said and done maybe I’ll write a book about it and get on Oprah. :) Bon Appétit!
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